


Great Powers

by Taz



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Incest, M/M, Slash, transmogrifcation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 20:56:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taz/pseuds/Taz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In addition to the listed characters, this work includes a number of characters who may seem a tad familiar to Discworld fans. Among them are Ma Boggs, Sean Boggs, Agnes Nettle, Severna (Maggie) Gable, and Esme Weathers of Bastleyville, West Virginia.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Great Powers

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to the listed characters, this work includes a number of characters who may seem a tad familiar to Discworld fans. Among them are Ma Boggs, Sean Boggs, Agnes Nettle, Severna (Maggie) Gable, and Esme Weathers of Bastleyville, West Virginia.

Some philosophers postulate that Time, metaphorically speaking, is a pair of trousers. They further contend that the crotch of the garment is the result of decisions so critical that they force a split in reality. Your wife offers you a choice between Lapsang Souchong and Earl Grey at breakfast, and suddenly there are two of you living in separate but equal trouser legs. The logical conclusion is not that every pot of tea is a whole new pair of pants _in potentia_ , but that it’s an article of clothing only an octopus could wear. And what’s with the plaid, anyway?

The truth is simpler – everything that can happen is already happening everywhere, and what’s more it always has been.  

Even as we speak, a good example of this is taking place out in an obscure spiral galaxy hanging just to the right of Andromeda.

The galaxy in question has been spinning like a Frisbee since shortly after the Big Bang, and in its time it’s seen the birth and extinction of a number of intelligent species. Some of them actually developed space travel and achieved empires of universal irrelevance before retiring to that Big Fossil Bed in the Sky. At the moment, it’s enjoying a respite from that sort of shenanigan, except for one obscure yellow star that’s been giving it a spot of bother recently.

For the last five billion years this star had been quietly making improvements on a small suburban lot in the least fashionable arm of the galaxy. By scrimping and saving it had managed to put together a nice little solar system of eight impossibly round planets. There used to be nine of them, but something happened to one of them. (The star doesn’t like to talk about it.) The third planet out is especially pretty. It’s the kind of big blue marble you’ll always lose playing ‘keepsies’ with the neighborhood bully. It has water and an oxygen rich atmosphere, and there’s an artful naiveté to the way that the major landmasses have scattered themselves over the surface.

To the right of the top of the landmass on the left is a spine of well-worn mountain peaks. Think of them as this trousers’ version of the Ramtops. Look closely at that part curling around what—in the real world—would be Slice. There, where the mountains are airy and the glens are rushy, the land is so twisted and gnarly a farmer can get a crop from three sides of an acre. There is life in those mountains, tucked away in hollows so deep and dark that magic doesn’t just run through them, it does the Turkey Trot.

If you had looked closely a few nights ago, you would have seen a lone carriage of the horseless type prowling up a narrow mountain road. Call it lone because there were no other vehicles on the road, and horseless because life here has invented the internal combustion engine (nobody ever said it was intelligent life). Say that it’s prowling because, by the rules of dramatic narrative, anything that big and black must be said to prowl, thus implanting a suggestion of predation in the mind of the reader. The manufacturer, however, named the vehicle after a medium sized prey animal most commonly associated with a savanna type ecosystem, thus implanting a suggestion of speed in the mind of the buyer at a time when gasoline was 10¢ a gallon.

On the night in question, there were two men inside the carriage, brothers who, for reference purposes, we will nominate Sam and Dean.

Sam, the younger one, was driving. Dean, the older one, had a date with Destiny, a thing he should have guessed from the portentous music that was pouring out of the radio…

_All my memories gather round her,  
Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water..._

Apparently, Destiny likes John Denver. (Who knew?)

But, back to our story…

Dean should have noticed the portentousness. He was perceptive in these matters by early training, and would have noticed if he hadn’t been sound asleep. As it was, all he did was turn over and screw himself into the jacket that belonged to Sam that he was using for a pillow.

Destiny will not be ignored, however. It kept nudging his subconscious when the vehicle shifted into low, and causing his ears to pop from the altitude. Something eventually got through…

_Dark and dusty, painted on the sky  
Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye…_

“That’s jus’ wrong,” Dean murmured.

“Tell me about it,” Sam said. His jacket was going to be a wrinkled, drooled on mess when he got it back.

“Change it,” Dean muttered.

“You know,” Sam said, fiddling with the tuner. “You’re a bitch even in your sleep.”

He said it affectionately, and he said it softly. Dean had done most of the driving for the last forty-eight hours, but he had control issues over relinquishing the steering wheel and Sam was hoping he’d sleep a while longer.

Destiny, and the radio, saw that it was not to be.

_Thank God I’m a country boy!_

“No!” Dean’s eyes snapped open and he sat up, groping for the box of cassettes under the seat. He grabbed the first one that came to hand and rammed it into the slot.

The tape whirred and the speakers emitted the opening chords of ‘Immigrant Song.

“That’s better,” Dean said.

He relaxed, and turned up the volume, about to ask Sam what the hell he’d been thinking,when the music stopped. The tape deck made a noise between a click and a burp as the cassette shot from the slot like a watermelon from between the lips of a freckle faced boy.

It bounced off the seat, and hit the floor. The radio started playing,

_I fell into a burning ring of fire, I went down, down, down and the flames went higher…_

Dean arched an eyebrow at it. When he reached for a knob, Sam smacked his hand. 

“What? I was going to turn it off!”

“Trust me, Johnny Cash is as good as it gets,” Sam said. “You can’t turn it off. If you try to turn, it plays folk-rock…or worse.” He held up a cassette with a wad of its entrails spilling out. “Been doing it ever since we crossed the county line.”

Dean squinted at Sam. “Are you saying that my radio’s hexed?”

“Or else it’s really tired of Metallica.” Sam dropped the cassette in order to have both hands on the wheel. He was negotiating a series of vicious switchbacks.

“Where are we?” Dean was fully awake now, and the headlights only offered intermittent flashes of a scrub covered hillside. That was on the right. On the left, the pointed tops of full grown pines testified to a shear drop.

A sign blurred by in the headlights—Butcher’s Hollow 5 Miles. “Oh fuck!” Dean said. “We’re in country music hell.”

“Proof that Jimmy’s contact was right.”

“What’s the place we’re looking for?”

“Bastleyville – the heart of beautiful Lancashire County, West Virginia.”

“How far do you think?”

“Another 25 miles. Forty minutes at this rate”

“Backassville of West Nowhere. I hope to God there’s a motel.”

“You and me both, brother.”

_And all the girls, from nine to ninety, were snappin’ fingers, tappin’ toes and beggin’ him don stop…’_

Johnny Cash was still singing as they clattered over a covered bridge, and took a left-hand fork. They blew through Bastleyville before they even knew they’d arrived and might have missed it entirely, except radio switched abruptly to _Trailer for sale or rent…_ And there was a sign reading, Bastleyville Cabins – by the day or the week.

“They had better have a vacancy,” Sam said. “Because that is really starting to irk me.”

He made the turn and nosed the Impala up a ridge where six tiny cabins clustered in a half-circle around a parking lot with a flag pole in the middle. Several of the cabins had lights on inside them, and cars parked in front, but the one with the glowing vacancy sign was dark as Sam pulled up.

“Think there’s anyone awake?”

“Let’s find out.” Dean got out and slammed the door, leaving Sam to kill time checking out the license plates on the other vehicles—Virginia and Maryland were local. But there was a van from Minnesota with _Green Valley Christian College_ stenciled on the side.

When Dean slid into the passenger seat, he was holding a key. “Number 6.”

“Someone was in there?”

“Nope. Honor system. Take a key, and pay in the morning—or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Be turned into a newt.”

“You’re kidding!”

“It’s what the sign said.” Dean sighed. “I hope they have Magic Fingers.”

Number 6 did not have Magic Fingers, but it did have plank floors, varnished pine walls, two beds, a wood burning stove in one corner and the minimum in indoor plumbing. It was a pleasant change from the usual candidate in the Country’s Ugliest Motel Wallpaper and Shag Carpeting Contest.

Dean threw himself face down on the nearest quilted spread. The bed bounced up and down and the springs went _sproing!_

Sam dropped a duffle bag on top of him. “Call Bobby and let him know we made it,” He said, vanishing into the bathroom.

A minute later the toilet flushed, and Dean heard the shower running. “Don’t use all the hot water!” he called. When there was no answer, he rolled carefully so the duffle didn’t end on the floor, and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. Dialing with one hand, he fished in the bag for the laptop and clip-file. The phone pinged and, informed him that up here wireless meant no signal. He cursed and set everything except the clip-file on the floor beside the bed. Then he kicked his shoes off, flopped back and was almost asleep again when Sam came out of the bathroom.

“Your turn. Did you talk to Bobby?”

“No signal. Call him tomorrow. There’s a pay phone outside the office.”

“The kind you put money in?”

“That’s what pay phone means…”

“Go on, Princess,” Sam flicked the file off of Dean’s stomach, “before you fall sleep in your clothes.”

Dean dropped his legs off the bed, forced the rest of himself upright, and stumbled into the bathroom and accomplished the minimal necessities.

Sam was going through the clip-file when he came out and offered to share, but Dean shook his head—too tired. He dropped his clothes on the foot rail and crawled between fresh smelling sheets and Sam pulled the chain on the reading light.

The bed swayed like a cradle, and outside a bullfrog was _thurummp_ _thurummping_. Dean was almost on the verge of falling asleep when then a tell-tale _skee, skee, sking_ from Sam’s side made it impossible. “Use a hand?” he said.

“Sorry. I was trying to be quiet.”

“Fat chance.” Dean snickered and rolled over on his back. He shoved up his hips and moon threw shadows across the bed. “Least you could do is help me take down the pup tent.”

Sam’s cock led the way as he padded across the space between them.

He slipped in beside Dean and the bed complained bitterly about the double weight. Even with Dean on his side it was a close fit, but the thickness poking between his thighs made Dean’s ass throb and beg. He wriggled into Sam’s lap and almost spilled them on the floor.

“Stop it! I don’t want to be picking splinters out of my ass.” Sam rolled over on top of him and pinned him securely with his weight, forcing him to surrender to being petted. But Sam couldn’t help making tight little thrusting probe. His cock rubbed against Dean’s asshole. Dean couldn’t help pooching back. The bed bounced up and down. Sam nipped his ear. “Behave.”

“Don’t want to.”

“I know. When we’re done here will go up to the Poconos…and, oh…oh, fuck…” Sam stiffened and a hot rush washed over Dean’s balls.

He scooped it in his hand, used it to grease Dean and brought him over the top, hard.

The springs were finally still and Sam was yawing against Dean’s neck, when Dean said, “Did you really just say that you want to go to the Poconos?”

“Yeah.” Sam snuggled closer “I want to spend a night in one of those tacky honeymoon hotels…drop you in a giant champagne glass and pour bubbly over you.” _Lick you clean,_ was lost in a snore.

“You never mentioned that before.” Dean didn’t say that it was a bizarre ambition. That was understood.

Morning brought an electric blue sky and crisp air with a hint of wood smoke. Someone had lit a fire in one of the cabins.

While Dean was finally going through the clip-file, Sam came to the bathroom door wiping the last dollops of shaving cream from his face.

“Anything jump out to you?”

“Nope. This thin. Not the sort of thing Bobby usually gets his shorts in a bunch over. An article on witchcraft in the Appalachians, and one on American quilts with, pretty pictures. Screen-caps from a nut-job Christian web-site. The usual satanic ritual crap.” Dean looked closely at the last item, a bad photocopy. “This is only thing that even looks likely—an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about a linguistics student who went missing in ’89. She was staying in a town called Pine Knob.”

“That’s around here.”

“We can check it out.”

“After breakfast. Come on get a move on. I’m hungry.”

 

“Hey!” Dean had stopped so suddenly that Sam bumped into him. “What are you…?”

Dean was staring at a ‘59 El Camino. It was turquoise blue and parked in front of the office. “Look at the fins on that thing. It almost makes me feel inadequate.”

“So what? It’s a West Virginia Cadillac, and yours are plenty big…”  Sam said, but Dean was lost in fin envy. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

“You know, we could use a second vehicle.”

“The monsters would laugh.” Sam gave him a push. “Go pay the bill, unless you want to be ‘newtered.’ Remember?”

“All right.”

Dean paused, however to admire the El Camino’s cream colored upholstery before going into the office.  

“Morning,” said the man sorting keys at the desk. He was a little older than Dean, and had a cap of tight black curls that reminded Dean of Tom Jones. “What can I do you for?”

“It’s what do we owe you?” Dean held up the key. “We got in late.”

“You’re the Impala!” The man grinned. “She’s a beaut.”

“You own the El Camino?”

“Yep.” The man stood up and offered his hand to Dean. “My names Sean Boggs. You up here hunting or fishing?”

“Not sure yet, but we’d like to stay over another night.”

“That’ll be fifty then” Boggs put a registration card on the counter. “Sign here.

Dean said, scrawled the name on his current Visa card at the bottom of the card, but the phone rang as he was pulling his billfold out of his back pocket.

While Boggs was explaining directions to Labyrinth Park, Dean checked out the flyers on the bulletin board. There was a Halloween bonfire and weenie roast at the park that evening. There probably wasn’t much to do in Bastleyville, but never discount a Halloween party.

“Sorry,” Boggs said, as set the phone down.

“Can anyone come to this weenie roast?”

“Absolutely. Bring your own hotdogs. The Spirit Circle supplies soft drinks, marshmallows and…oop! Sorry. We don’t take credit.”

“Mmm?” Dean put the Visa back in its slot, and handed over three twenties. That was going to leave him pretty thin, which could be a problem if they didn’t clear this quickly. “Is there an ATM in town?”

“No but there’s one over in Howells Fork,” Boggs said, getting the change.

“What about getting breakfast around here?”

“Cake’s Café.” Sean pulled a paper menu from under the counter. “Down the corner. Open for breakfast and lunch. Ma will put up a nice picnic for you, if you want. By the way, my brother Jason owns the gas station. If you need work while you’re here, he’ll see you right.”

“Far as I know, I’m good, but thanks.” Dean took the menu and turned to leave. Then he noticed the little plaque with Bogg’s after-hours policy on it.

“Why newts?”

“Can’t stand frogs.” At Dean’s expression, Boggs tipped his head in the direction of the woods behind the cabins. “There’s a spring back there. They hang around all night croaking.”

“Do you ever have trouble with people skipping out?”

“Never.” Boggs tapped plaque, and winked.

“Oh, that’s…” _Pretend I didn’t ask_.

Sam was waiting for him in the car.

“I could be jumping to conclusions here,” Dean said, sliding behind the steering wheel. “But, it’s possible that we’re not on a wild goose chase, after all.”

‘Down the corner’ pretty much summed up Bastleyville by day. There were a few houses back in the trees, but downtown consisted of the Southern States Co-op and a three small businesses all in a row.

It was so small, that if you blinked, you’d miss, and yet all of the parking in front of Cake’s Café was occupied.

Dean put the Impala on the gravel beside _The Herb Garden and Pharmacy_ : organic herbs, incense, candles, crystals, simples, ceremonial supplies and the largest selection of alternative spiritual resources in West Virginia. Right next door was _Maggies’s Mountain Crafts,_ with handmade quilts, baskets, wreathes, folky stenciled signs and decorative iron work.

“Witches,” Dean said.

“What was that about jumping to conclusions,” Sam said.

“What do you want to bet?”

The bell the door jingled as they walked into steamy warmth and the ambrosial smells of eggs, sizzling bacon, pancakes and coffee. It was as welcoming as a mother’s kiss. They lucked into the last empty booth.

The waitress’s nametag said that she was Agnes, and she arrived bearing coffee and a dish full of creamers. Agnes had a mass of dark red hair, a figure that would have had Rubens salivating, and didn’t waste anyone’s time asking if they needed a few minutes.

 When she left with their order, Dean settled back to look around and get a feel for the place.  

There was a dumpling of a woman behind the counter had to be Sean’s Ma. She had the same cap of tight curls in silver. There was flyer for the weenie roast stuck to the back of the cash register. There was a stenciled sign on the inside of the door that said _Blessed Be_ , instead of _Thank you for your patronage_ , but there had been one just like it in the craft shop window.

He tried to catch Sam’s eye, but Sam was watching Agnes. “You look like you just found a shiny dime,” he said. “Didn’t know you went for that type.”

Sam shrugged. Agnes had a nice smile. What really appealed to him, though, was the way she had paid attention as he was giving his order. It wasn’t that women didn’t pay attention to him. They did, frequently. They just didn’t do it with the quite the same conviction when Dean was in proximity. That wasn’t something Sam felt like explaining. He picked up a creamer and popped the seal.

Dean leaned toward him. “I’ll bet she’s one of them.”

Sam fumbled the little container and had to fish it out of his coffee. “Oh, great…”

“I’m just saying, that if you’re into chubby chasing…”  

“Don’t. Just don’t.” Sam picked up his cup, took a drink and closed his eyes. “Let me have one cup of coffee before you start.”

Satisfied, Dean returned to surveillance. Agnes was the only waitress, but she was up to the job. There wasn’t an empty placemat in the place, and a good deal of contented chewing going on.

Locals were easy to spot. Denim, plaid and baseball caps. There were two tables, other than theirs, that stood out. The pair of men at one, might be students, despite their just-found-Jesus haircuts. A foursome at another table were definitely college students in jeans and branded hoodies.

Inclining his head in their direction, Dean kept his voice down. “That bunch was staying 2 and 3 last night.”

“Yeah. Kevin, Janet, and the older woman is Dr. Hoy. I don’t know the other guy’s name. They’re all from the anthropology department at Kearny State. They’re doing research on local folklore.”

“How do you know that?”

“They were loading up while you in the office. Bobby once told that he spent a coast to coast plane trip sitting next to an anthropology student, who was convinced witches were simply persecuted old women.”

“They can’t be persecuted enough as far as I’m concerned. What does researching local folklore mean?”

“Talking to people. Collecting songs and local legends. Documenting the way things are done. That sort of thing.”

The woman Sam had identified as Dr. Hoy looked up and saw Dean. Then she noticed Sam and gave him a little smile and a wave. Sam smiled and waved back.

“Think we should make friends?”  

 “Why not?”

“I just remembered something,” Dean said. “How much money do you have?”

“About a hundred. Why?”

“They have bear claws in the bakery case, and they don’t take credit cards. Also, if we’re going to a weenie roast, we need beer and hot dogs.”

“Here you go fellas. More coffee?”

Agnes had arrived with their breakfast.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks are owed to Tryfanstone who puts up with me whacking weirdness at her.


End file.
